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You are correct that the Scriptures were limited to those writings of Apostolic origin and that taught the Apostolic faith. Nothing written outside of the immedicate circle of the eyewitnesses became Scripture.

The recognition and preservation of what was and was not Scripture was the "work" of the Church as a whole. The declarations of any given council of bishops ratified, so to speak, the mystical understanding of the Church -- which is the Mystical Body of Christ. This is perhaps a difference between traditional Orthodox understanding and a slightly different emphasis on the role of formal Church structure held by Catholics. Both are positions Protestants would disagree with, but there is perhaps some difference.

Your analogy of the telephone is not a very exact one, in one sense (but then, neither was mine of the father to son transmission of a family story.)

What happened was more like this: The Apostles received the faith from Christ. No matter where they went throughout the known world, the faith they taught was the same. The key things were written down and compiled into what we now know as Scripture. These Scriptures were shared throughout the Christian world, and were recognized as Scripture by all, eventually. Their authority is paramount and is on a different level from all other parts of Tradition. Nothing can be taught that is not compatible with Scriptural teaching.

But many things were not written down, since the world could not contain the books. Faithful and clergy alike were taught these things throughout the Church as it grew and spread. The deposit of faith, which is Christ Himself, lived within the Church. As controversies arose, the tests to which doctrines were put were first and foremost the writings of the Holy Scriptures, Old and New Testament alike. Were this not so, the Fathers' writings wouldn't be leavened with the words of Scripture. The Church is the humble preserver of the Scriptures and the apostolic understanding of the words of Scripture, but no body of men, regardless of their titles, can place themselves above the Scriptures -- which are the verbal icon of Christ.

Another test was what was believed everywhere and by all, to borrow from the phrase of St. Vicent of Lerins.

This is the "consensus patrum." It was and is not one man on the end of a play telephone chain -- it was what was found to have been passed down throughout the Church. If the same belief had been passed down within the churches in Ephesus, Jerusalem, Rome, Alexandria, Carthage, and the farthest reaches of the Church, it was and is pretty safe to say that the only possible explanation for this is the explanation that the Church gives: that these beliefs are Apostolic in origin, and were thus passed down as a precious deposit.

Given the tendency of the Church in the early centuries to hash things out in great detail over seemingly minor issues, it should be notable that there is no record of internal debate or polemics about any of these things. When one branch of the "telephone chain" got something wrong, the other branches were usually right there to set them straight.

And more to the point, since Christ himself is, in a very real sense, Himself the deposit of the faith, and lives within the Church through his Holy Spirit, these beliefs and teachings are not so much things that are passed down as they are things that remain living within the Church.

For someone who does not live within the liturgical and ascetic life of the Orthodox Church, it is perhaps hard to understand how alive and present Holy Tradition (including the Scriptures themselves) is to us. It is not the province of musty manuscripts and stories told over the breaking of bread (although there have always been plenty of both of those!) It is primarily the province of the living experience of the Church at prayer and union with God.